Friday, June 2, 2017

Tolkien, Agatha Christie, Sherlock and Other Books in the News (June 2, 2017)

Brand new Vellum picks a fight for prettier (e)books

E-books are a lot of things. Convenient. Good for the
environment. Usually cheaper than printed books. One thing they’re rarely
accused of is being good-looking. Ugly books is what 180g is declaring war on
with a completely revamped, 2.0 version of Vellum. Oh, and in the process,
they’re adding support for making wood-pulp books, too.

There was no Department of Labor and Department of Human
Resources to "protect" them from living full lives. Kids in those
days were regarded as valuable because they were tangibly productive. They
worked, gained skills, and produced for their families or otherwise worked for
businesses here and there. They were assets. As they gained skills, discipline,
and a work ethic, they could become ever more valuable to their custodians and
communities. This is a major reason why people wanted them. And the kids, in
turn, were socialized to be grateful to their benefactors whether at home or
work.

The seventh book in the best-selling history series, co-written with Martin Dugard, is titled Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence. It will be released on Sept. 19 by Henry Holt.

On Thursday, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt released a new
illustrated book that draws on the archives of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of
“The Lord of the Rings” fantasy epic and its predecessor, “The Hobbit.” The new
book, “Beren and Lúthien,” was compiled and edited by Christopher Tolkien, the
third son of the author.

New book 'Anatomy of Innocence' allows wrongfully convicted
to tell their stories

In recent years, wrongful conviction stories like the ones
in “Serial” and Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” have captivated audiences. The
characters in these stories are ordinary people. That's what makes the stories
so intriguing – this could happen to anyone.

The world’s most renowned murder mystery writer Agatha
Christie has many as 66 detective novels to her credit. She is one of the
largest selling authors till date and has also written 150 short stories,
plays, and created two of the world’s most admired sleuths, Hercule Poirot and
Miss Marple.

Pinkerton: Reagan Rising, Carter Falling: a New Book Offers
Lessons for Trump from Two Presidents

“For conservatives, it was their Camelot.” Those words
appear as the epigraph to Craig Shirley’s new book, Reagan Rising: The Decisive
Years, 1976-1980. This is the fourth book of Reagan biography from
Shirley, a longtime conservative political operative and p.r. maven who has
reinvented himself, in the last decade, as a popular but also scholarly author.

In her illustrious book, The Language Police: How Pressure
Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2004), Diane Ravitch discusses her
outrageous experiences as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board.
She illuminates several of the problems created for children and society by the
language police and presents strategies for an improved system.

They say that authors are not the best judges of their
greatest work. Only the wisdom of time can determine that. This seems
especially true of Henry Hazlitt. Seventy years after he wrote Economics in One
Lesson, the book is still going strong. Most recently, it was recommended by
Mike Rowe.

In many ways, the worst thing to happen to book publishing
has been the persistent strength of print books and the drop in sales of
ebooks. Namely, the stalling of the digital transformation of the industry.

Beatles book goes behind the scenes of 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band' 50 years after album's release

To commemorate one of the most innovative albums of all
time, former rock and roll journalist and music executive Brian Southall penned
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: The Album, the Beatles and the World in
1967.”

Caitlyn Jenner opened up Monday about her frank new memoir
detailing her now 2-year-old transition and the bumps along the way, including
her three failed marriages, thoughts of suicide while she was relentlessly
pursued by paparazzi and, finally, freedom to be her true self.

Ebooks have many advantages over their print counterparts,
such as easy storage and portability, as well as a generally lower price. For
some time, publishers and bookstores feared that ebooks would make print books
obsolete, threatening to put many people out of business.

After Bill Gates recommended a book on Twitter, it shot to
the top of Amazon's bestseller list

As the Washington Post noted, Steven Pinker's 2011 “The
Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined” was the No. 1
bestselling book on the online bookstore as of Tuesday morning, following
Gates' imprimatur, delivered as part of a 14-tweet thread aimed at recent
college graduates.